WHEELER— ANT LARV^. 299 



The larva is cylindrical, covered with a very tough, opaque, grayish, 

 hairless skin and furnished with long, falcate mandibles. The pupa 

 is enclosed in a very tough, black cocoon. These peculiarities are 

 evidently adaptations to exposure to the air and light, to the exigen- 

 cies of frequent and protracted transportation and to feeding on 

 the bodies of termites brought into the nest by the workers. Mr. 

 Lang actually observed the exposure of the black cocoons to the 

 sunlight, a peculiarity of behavior which I had also observed in cer- 

 tain Australian Ponerinse of the genera Diacamrna and Rhytido- 

 ponera (1915). 



The third larva (Fig. 4), that of Bothroponcra sublccvis, one of 

 four species of the genus, which I collected in Australia, has a very 

 broad elliptical body, with a short, stout neck, strongly folded over 

 onto the ventral surface, which is somewhat concave. The integu- 

 ment is also hairless and of a peculiar opaque, gray color. The 

 sides of the three thoracic segments and first abdominal segment 

 are furnished with fleshy tubercles and the mouthparts are very 

 highly developed. It is placed on its back by the nurses and fed 

 with fragments of insects deposited on its trough-like ventral sur- 

 face as in our North American Ponerinze.^ 



The feeding of the. larvae with pieces of insect food is not, how- 

 ever, confined to the Ponerinae. Miss Fielde and I have sJiown that 

 one of the commonest Myrmicine ants of the North Eastern States, 

 Aphcenogastcr fulva, has the same habit. During late June, at the 

 height of the (breeding season, it is hardly possible to remove the 

 stone covering a nest of this ant without finding one or more larvse 

 lying on their backs or sides in the act of feeding on the legs of 

 flies or fragments of other small insects. Janet has observed simi- 



3 Mayr described Bothroponcra as a genus, but Emery, Forel and Santschi 

 have been treating it as a subgenus of Pachycondyla. I return to Mayr's 

 conception, because the adult, at least, of the Australian species of Bothro- 

 poncra exhibits several peculiarities of behavior, such as the extrusion when 

 captured of a mass of frothy bubbles from the tip of the gaster, and because 

 of the structure of the larva, which is very different from that of Pachy- 

 condyla as will be seen by comparing Fig. 4 with my previously published 

 figures of P. monteziimcE. The larvae of Diacamrna, Leptogenys and 

 Odontomachus bear a greater resemblance to those of Pachycondyla. 

 Bothroponcra is, moreover, confined to tropical Africa, Asia and Australia, 

 whereas Pachycondyla is neotropical. 



